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About Cecilia

I am a Life & Clutter Coach and IST Practitioner. I LOVE helping writers, creatives and entrepreneurs just like YOU, make their homes and lives into supportive containers for their creative AND personal lives.

Cecilia's sharp, crystalline insight has kept me on track in my creative life, my business life, and my emotional life for the past six years: she's a triple threat!

- Sarah Selecky, author of Giller Prize nominated This Cake is for the Party

I realized that when my partner is at work I can UNPLUG the internet. The ping of a new email is to me, what the ding of that bell was to those Pavlovian dogs.

I can't not look...

What do I think I'm going to find in there?

A cure for cancer! Free cashmere sweaters! An email transfer for $10,000!

Puppies!!!! Real puppies!!!!

More often than not, it's a facebook comment that somebody I don't know has made on somebody I sort of know's post. I couldn't care less.

But that doesn't stop me from clicking.

So today, I turned off the internet. I didn't just turn it off on my computer (that doesn't work, I've tried), I unplugged it. Wow! A brave new world revealed.

Remember typewriters?

In university I used to borrow my friend Graham's word processing typewriter. There was this tiny little screen where you could see what you were writing, but that was it.

No facebook, no youtube, no adorable elephants named Tara with best dog friends named Bella.

Today after turning off the internet I opened a blank document in Word, fiddled with the font type and size and started writing. Just like a typewriter!

I thought I was sitting down to write this, to write to you, but I didn't. I just wrote about... stuff. Whatever. It didn't really matter. I did it for two hours and I did it because I enjoyed it.

It was more than just turning off the internet. It was also about allowing myself to write for the sake of writing. To write for the pleasure of writing. To write for myself.

Jumbo crayons in both fists scribbling on your bedroom wall kind of writing.

Last week I asked you what you're struggling with. I had so many great responses (thank you!) which I will be addressing in the weeks and months to come.

A few of you wanted to know how to start, where to start and why to start. I have a lot to say about starting but today, start here:

Unplug your internet!

Seriously, but first send this to a friend so they can unplug their internet too.

When you're back online I'd love to hear all about what happened when you unplugged, so be sure to comment below.

Take care,

Cecilia

ox

p.s. If you're reading this and you're not on my list, you should really get yourself on it! I send out a fun and useful email just about every week on clearing clutter and living life. Just pop on over here to get on! All the cool kids are doing it!

Reader Comments (2)

And for those of us that can't actually turn off the Internet access (building websites without Internet access gets ... difficult), there are handy plugins like LeechBlock.The caveat, of course, being that the moment I turn it on and block my time-wasters, a client appears who needs me to handle their Facebook promotion. 'cause Murphy's Law works JUST like that ;)

I love that I got this posting in a long list of emails waiting for me after a week of being off the phone/internet grid. It was a precious time and I am already missing it, only one day back into our hectic north american cyberspace life style. So right now, I'm signing off and going to walk my dog. Great reminder!